Display devices using nematic liquid crystals are widely used these days in applications such as watches, word processors, compact TV sets, etc.
The twist nematic (TN) type or the super twist nematic (STN) type devices which are mainly used now have a response time as slow as several miliseconds, and are inferior in visual field of display properties so that their application is limited. Display elements using ferroelectric liquid crystals are gaining great interest these days. These liquid crystals, though being smectic, have spontaneous polarization which provides quick response of several to several tens of microseconds (see, e.g., N.A. Clark and S.T. Lagerwall, Applied Physics Lett., 36(11), page 899 (1980) incorporated herein by reference. To obtain the quick response, however, the inner cell width of the ferroelectric liquid crystal device panel should be as small as from 1 .mu.m to 4 .mu.m. In addition, ferroelectric liquid crystal characteristics are more like crystals than to nematic liquid crystals in that the crystal arrangements are easily destroyed by softly touching the center of the panel, and ferroelectric liquid crystals do not recover their initial arrangement in the way that nematic liquid crystals do. That is, ferroelectric liquid crystals have problems in that they have poor shock resistance.
As a solution to the aforesaid problems, a method using a space layer comprised of a light-insensitive polyimide based organic polymer material prepared by etching using a photoresist, or is prepared from a photosensitive polyimide based organic polymer precursor which is patternwise polymerized, is disclosed in JP-A-61-196230 (the term "JP-A" as used herein means an "unexamined published Japanese patent application"). The cell spacing could be set at relatively high precision using the method; however, the ferroelectric liquid crystal cells produced by such method have poor shock resistance, and thus are very difficult to handle.